In a large media service head-end or large satellite TV monitoring center, there can be tens, hundreds or even thousands of live video feeds to be monitored and processed. Video ingestion and transcoding are two common processes that are implemented, where reliability is normally an important concern. Video ingestion involves the process of transferring content to a digital editing or storage system. The process includes digitizing the signal, compressing the digital data stream to reduce the amount of data stored and, storing the data as a file on a hard disk. Often, additional data is added to the file, such as program identifiers and time stamps. Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital data conversion of one encoding to another, such as for movie data files or audio files. This is usually done in cases where a target device (or workflow) does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size, or to convert incompatible or obsolete data to a better-supported or modern format.
Considering the high storage requirements and input/output (I/O) demands for high definition (HD) video ingestion, and the high computation demand on transcoding, 1 plus 1 (1+1) backup mechanisms for each live channel is used to ensure reliability. For example, a 1+1 backup mechanism for both live ingestion and transcoding can be used. Alternatively, a 1+1 backup mechanism for ingestion with central storage based transcoding can be used. Such mechanisms carry a substantially high cost, e.g., for large centers. There is a need for an improved and reliable backup mechanism for media or video ingestion and transcoding.